Wednesday 5 October 2011 06.30 EDT
First published on Wednesday 5 October 2011 06.30 EDT

Jeremy Paxman thinks we're neglecting the history of the British empire. "Perhaps in the dark recesses of a golf-club bar some harrumphing voice mutters about how much better the world seemed to turn when a great-uncle in baggy shorts ran a patch of Africa the size of Lancashire. But, by and large, no one has much to say about empire." That will come as a surprise to the authors of the dozen fat books about it that have appeared over the last few years. If Paxman thinks his Empire is filling a gap, he's mistaken.

British imperial history is highly contested territory. One reason is obvious: the number of peoples, societies and nations that still bear the marks of it, or think they do. Another is that it is so often discussed – or expected to be discussed – judgmentally. What readers generally look for first in a new history of the empire is whether it is for it or against it. More neutral books are often forced into one category or the other simply to give reviewers a handle on them; or, if they can't be, they are ignored. For those of us who burrow away at the subject academically, this last is probably the best we can hope for. It's not an option available to Paxman, however, who is too famous to be ignored. In fact it's difficult to say where he stands in the great pro- or anti-imperial debate; but that's to the credit of the book, especially if it can put over to readers that the question is not a simple one.

Judgments come thick and fast, but they are not all on one side. The worst atrocities of British imperial rule are properly highlighted and deplored. The horrors of the slave trade, for example, "should be engraved on the national conscience. It is one of the most disgraceful episodes in British history." Similarly the opium wars, the British reprisals after the Indian mutiny, "genocide" (the right word, he thinks) in Tasmania, the Amritsar massacre, Balfour's perfidy in Palestine, "offering land belonging to one people as a gift to another", the great Bengal famine, the now notorious Kenyan prison camps, and British imperial arrogance and racism generally. Few of the leading "builders" of the British empire – heroes to a previous generation of imperialists – escape Paxman's scorn. The early ones were mostly pirates and freebooters. Clive of India was mainly a fortune-seeker, "scheming, and devious in business". General Gordon was "half-cracked". Cecil Rhodes was "the most sabre-toothed of all empire-builders". Kitchener was a monster. Lawrence of Arabia was romantic, but (again) "half-cracked". Churchill may not have been "quite sane" when it came to India. Lord Meath, the creator of Empire Day, is described as looking "a bit like Father Christmas", with "a bald head, a red face and an enormous white beard"; he had some silly ideas about instilling "duty and discipline" into working-class ne'er-do-wells. (David Cameron might like to look him up.) Others were mostly hypocrites, or "self-deluders" at best. The last includes Gladstone and "more recent moralists in Downing Street".

On the other hand, the book also describes atrocities committed by the colonised in, if anything, even more gory terms: the "Black Hole of Calcutta", for example, "a horror story to rival anything among the Gothic tales which swept Britain" at the time. Paxman isn't too keen on the Mahdi, Gordon's nemesis, either, with his "usual jihadi stuff" and the regime of "slavery, institutionalised paedophilia, hand-loppings and floggings to death" instituted under him. So there's a certain balance here.

More importantly, there was "another side to colonialism". Britain's most admirable imperial agents were her ordinary administrators, who Paxman thinks have been unfairly ridiculed; they were generally good eggs, and – crucially – incorruptible. The British empire was also prone to periodic spasms of moral self-questioning, which is unusual for empires, one of which in the end got rid of slavery. The postwar transition to self-government was managed "peacefully" in the main, though "in a handful of places the British fought nasty little campaigns". (I'm not sure that many Kenyans, Malayans and Cypriots would accept that "little".) Overall, "if you had to live under a foreign government," then the British empire "was better than many of the other possibilities". That "if you had to", however, is a crucial caveat.

If you have to have a popular introduction to British imperial history, too, this book could be said to be better than many of the other possibilities, in particular it is far preferable to Michael Gove's "patriotic" approach. It's a very engaging account, built mainly around dramatic incidents in exotic places (just right for the forthcoming TV series), and the lives of fascinating people, with a good sprinkling of jokes, funny nicknames and sexual references. Paxman makes some very sharp points, and writes well. Here's an example, towards the end: "The British empire had begun with a series of pounces. Then it marched. Next it swaggered. Finally, after wandering aimlessly for a while, it slunk away." If you want the appearance of the whole process described in a few short sentences, I can't imagine it done better.

He doesn't, however, delve much beneath appearances. There's nothing here on the economic, cultural or any other roots of British imperialism. Paxman is insistent that there was no great plan behind it, and that often governments were simply bumped into taking countries without really wanting to. At times he appears to be going along with what he takes to be the 19th-century historian JR Seeley's view, that the empire was accumulated "absent-mindedly". (In fact Seeley said the opposite. Everyone gets this wrong.) To his credit, Paxman repeatedly confesses his own puzzlement: "there was something inherently nonsensical about it … How could the ultimate purpose of colonisation be freedom?" Well, there is an answer to that. He might not agree with it, but he should try to understand it. Dismissing things as "nonsense" is a way of avoiding the bother of explaining them.

In view of the book's subtitle, it's a shame he doesn't say more about what the empire did to the British. He claims it "convinced the British that they were somehow special", but is very woolly about whom he means by "the British" in this context. Later on he claims that it was "mainly a ruling-class thing", with attempts to foist it on "the people" largely unsuccessful. "The noisier the loudspeakers of officialdom, the more reverberant the empty echo." This is hotly disputed in some historical circles, even for the inter-war period, which Paxman is referring to here. If it's true, however, it goes some way to explain the situation which he alleges – and deplores – at the beginning and end of his book: of widespread public amnesia about the old empire, while our prime minister pompously lectures the "lesser breeds" as if he were still wearing those baggy shorts. Hopefully he'll be watching the TV series, too.

Bernard Porter's The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism is published by Longman.